Thursday 10 April 2014

‘Temporary Monsters’ by Amanda Mason

“We could go for a walk,” she says.

The cafe is warm, too warm, and there’s a smell, hot grease and vinegar. It makes her stomach churn.

Her hat and gloves sag on the seat next to her.

They’re new.

They itch.

He grunts and picks up his newspaper.

“Shall we, then?” she asks.

Her voice is too harsh and she knows it; it scrapes the walls, claws at the steamy windows, but she can’t help it.

She fiddles with her empty cup, her thumb smearing the lipstick stain, wet and bloody.

He looks up, puzzled; not quite able to remember when she had begun to lose her appeal, when she had begun to reveal her true nature, when he had first noticed her sharp teeth, that vicious tongue.

“Where?” he says.

She shrugs and gestures towards the harbour, its fishing boats tethered, jerking intermittently against their ropes and against the coming storm.

Another grunt.

Her patience, fragile to begin with, frays and splits.

“Well, what do you want to do?” she asks.

He turns a page of the paper, as if he hasn’t heard.

She taps the table with glossy silver claws.

She won’t repeat herself, she refuses to.

“We could go for a walk,” he says, “as long as you don’t complain.”

“About what?”

“The cold, the wind, the sand in your eyes.”

“It stings.”

She can’t help herself.

Neither can he.

“As long as you don’t complain.”

She turns her head away from him and pretends to look out of the window.

She can’t fathom it.

She doesn’t know why she stays, why she lets him prowl and pick and worry at her.

When he folds the paper and stands, she jumps to her feet, fumbling with her hat and gloves.

They let the door clatter shut behind them. They pause as the wind strikes, swift and bitter and tugging further speech away.

It howls.

He takes her by the hand and they turn and make their way towards the bay, past the gaudy shops filled with plastic masks and temporary monsters.


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